This is the only camera that captures life on living pictures, the Lytro lets the user take pictures like never before. It is unlike the conventional camera that captures a single plane of light, this camera captures the entire light field, this means it captures all the light traveling in every direction in every point in space.
Since the user will capture the colour, intensity, and the direction of all the light, this means the user can experience the first major light field capability which is focusing after the fact. Focus and re-focus, anywhere in the entire picture and the user can refocus their pictures at anytime, after the fact. A example of this is shown in the two images below with two different focus fields.
Focusing after the fact means, no auto focus motor which then in turn means no shutter delay...... This allows the user to capture the moment they meant to capture, not the one a shutter-delayed camera captured for them.
Opinion
One challenge which i think the company will face will be convincing people that they want this interactivity.
The fiddling with photos can be a drawback as well as an asset - focusing 50 holiday snapshots may get tedious for the photographer, not to mention for a more casual viewer flipping though views of the event. Some may enjoy exploring the new aesthetic domain of shiftable focus, but alot of people taking snapshots just want it in focus in the first place.
Convincing people to buy something so different online could be a challenge on its own, people like to handle cameras, and, although they can try out the re-focusing effect on the Lytro website, they wont actually be able to get a feel for the camera itself.
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This sounds very interesting, I would definitely love if my camera could capture such detail, what was the pricing of this??
ReplyDeleteTo buy the Red Hot camera = $499 | 750 Pictures - 16GB
DeleteBuy Graphite $399 | 350 Pictures - 8GB
Buy Electric Blue $399 | 350 Pictures - 8GB
Which is quite expensive for the average consumer but then who knows there are alot of products out there at the moment like the iPad and iPhone that are also expensive but are being widely sold.
When the price does drop though i can forsee a huge amount of the products being sold.
Its a really interesting idea alright, and a massive step forward for digital photography. But like yourself I can't quite see the target market for this. Professional photographs would shy away from it as cheating I'd imagine and home users wouldn't be able to make full use of the potential of something like this. The files must be a massive size also, are they in a proprietary format?
ReplyDeleteWow our friends at Canon and Adobe would want to be worried. But seriously this camera seems to carry a attractive bundle of benefits. Besides the no shutter delay and the refocus it also looks extremely portable and light weight.
ReplyDeleteSeems to me like the way forward for digital camera's, the beginning of the future digital camera. It may take a while to catch on but it is a step in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteThats really cool. The fact that you can focus on what ever part of the image you want after its taken, is a brilliant feature and will no doubt be integrated into many digital cameras to come. I have to agree with Hazel however considering right now its like $400-500 US, so its too much for the average consumer wanting to take photos on their nights out and too much of a novelty for professional photographers. Serious amount of potential with this technology though.
ReplyDeleteI dunno, i reckon theres a market out for it right now. Nature photographers will love this, as well as sports photographers.
ReplyDeleteWith things like the Olympics coming up this would allow photographers to shoot somebody in the foreground, but if something particularly interesting is happening in the background, it hasn't been lost and can simply be re focused.
People who go for the whole bokeh effect in their imagery (as well as other blue and focus effects i'd imagine would also be thrilled by this. 400 aint that much considering the technology in my opinion :)